Facebook squeaks into the No 2 spot for video viewing

After Google, Facebook is where most people are viewing online video content

Watch out YouTube because Facebook is gaining a lot of traction on its video streaming front. According to a report real eased by comScore’s today, Facebook has surpassed Yahoo's video viewing for the month of July to become the second largest video site in the U.S. after Google's properties (including YouTube).

comScore found that 84.8% of the U.S. Internet audience is now viewing online video at some point during the month -- I'm surprised we aren't closer to 100% at this point. But as more people use their smartphones, tablets, laptops and computers to watch video, it is important to note that the average online video viewed is just 6.8 minutes long and the average ad is just 0.4 minutes long.

The report found that 184 million U.S. Internet users watched 36.9 billion online videos in July, while video ad views totaled 9.6 billion. This is up from the 180.4 million users for the month of June watching 33 billion videos and 11 billion ads. So, despite the increase of viewers and videos consumer for the month, the number of ads watched was down significantly.

The Google and YouTube properties still hold the biggest share of the online viewers with 157 million unique viewers for the month, this is heads above the 53 million from Facebook, 48.7 million for Yahoo, 44.8 million from Vevo and 42.7 million from Microsoft.

Out of the nearly 36.9 billion video views occurring during the month, Google Sites generating the highest number at 19.6 billion, followed by AOL with 665 million.

And none of these entities would be serving up all the videos to viewers without the ads paying the bills so when you comScore looked to see what services were doling out the most ad views, Google ranked first with 1.5 billion ads. The Internet king was followed by the cable alternative Hulu and its 1.2 billion ad views. Then it was Adap.tv with 1.1 billion, SpotXchange Video Ad Marketplace with 1 billion and TubeMogul Video Ad Platform with 830 million.

And, while some people are viewing these ads places before or during a video. the time spent viewing these ads differed greatly between online services. In total, the time spent watching video ads totaled 3.9 billion minutes and Adap.tv viewers watched ads for the most time -- 627 million minutes -- a far cry ahead of the least ad-driven audience of ESPN, where viewers watched 159 million minutes.

Video ads reached 52% of the total U.S. population an average of 61 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 46, while ESPN delivered an average of 26 ads per viewer.

The June 2012 YouTube partner data revealed that video music channels VEVO (45.1 million viewers) and Warner Music (26.1 million viewers) maintained the top two positions. Gaming channel Machinima ranked third with 23.6 million viewers, followed by Maker Studios with 21.2 million and FullScreen with 16.2 million.

Among the top 10 YouTube partners, Machinima demonstrated the highest engagement (76 minutes per viewer) followed by VEVO (50 minutes per viewer). VEVO streamed the most videos (567 million), followed by Machinima (447 million).